


An American Tradition

by KCUrquhart



Series: Downtime [4]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Brothers, Traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-19 23:23:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KCUrquhart/pseuds/KCUrquhart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint wasn’t much for traditions. He hated being predictable; it gave people a leg up on you if they knew ahead of time where you were going to be. But there was one tradition that he refused to give up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An American Tradition

Clint wasn’t much for traditions. He hated being predictable; it gave people a leg up on you if they knew ahead of time where you were going to be. But there was one tradition that he refused to give up. It was a secret tradition, though he was fairly certain that both Coulson and Natasha knew exactly what it was. But they never asked him about it, and he never offered to tell them. But every year, for one day in spring, Clint would disappear from SHIELD HQ. There were thousands of rumors about where exactly he went and what he did during that day, but no one had ever gotten it right.

The cheering of the crowd was a familiar roar that eased all of the tension of the year from Clint’s shoulders. He could make out the squeals of children, here for the first time, surrounded by the chants of the devoted fans. The sea of red swam through the stadium and the sniper part of Clint’s mind knew how hard it would be to try and pick out a specific person in the chaos.

Barney had suggested actually joining the crowds once. That maybe they should spend some of their saving and sit down in the baseball stadium with everyone else and feel like normal brothers for one day. Clint had laughed at the concept of them ever being normal. So they had continued to watch from their perch atop an office building across the street.

It had all started the first year they’d joined the circus. They had been moving through St. Louis when they overheard people talking about opening day for the Cardinals. Barney had drug Clint to the game and Clint had found their perch, and Barney had stolen them hot dogs from a street vendor that only seemed to show up on game days.

Clint could no longer remember who had won that game, but he remembered that it had been the first day he and Barney had actually enjoyed each other’s company. The circus had gone back through St. Louis 2 years later, and they made sure to go watch another baseball game. Even though it wasn’t opening day, it still somehow felt like the beginning of a tradition. After that, every time they were in St. Louis, they went to a game together. Always sitting in the same perch, always getting hotdogs from the same vendor, always rooting for the Cardinals despite not really knowing any of the other teams.

But things had changed. Things had gone wrong and Clint and Barney had gone their separate ways. It had been a rough time for Clint, losing his brother. It didn’t matter that they fought most of the time or that they spent 364 days pissing each other of, because they always had one day when they could forget their pasts and just be brothers. And for a long time after Barney left, Clint stayed as far away from baseball and St. Louis as he could possibly get.

Clint’s hatred of baseball had been one of the first things about him that had swept through SHIELD once he joined. It was hard for people not to notice once you shot a tv with an exploding arrow simply because ESPN was showing highlights from a Cardinals game. Some people had tried to ask him about it but he was always able to fend them off with the cold stare he’d learned from Coulson.

His entire life had turned upside-down again when Barney died. Clint had flown to St. Louis after the funeral and had gone to their old perch. He hadn’t really been sure why, but it had suddenly felt foolish to let go of the one piece of family he had had left. He wished he had made peace with Barney before it was too late and that they could have caught just one more game together.

Clint knew Barney had felt the same way. It was evidenced in the dozens of phrases carved into the concrete of their perch. Small little things that Barney must have written over the years when they had been apart. The dates of the games they’d attended as kids. The story about the one time Clint had tried a tofu-dog on a dare and had nearly thrown up. But Clint’s favorite was the small little C and B with an arrow shooting through them. He couldn’t believe Barney had remembered the stupid little symbol that Clint had drawn on nearly every surface of their trailer for a year until Barney had yelled at him.

In the six years since Barney’s death he had never missed a Cardinal’s opening game. He’d even purposely declined missions if they would interfere. Instead he would catch an early morning flight out, climb up to their perch for the game, before flying back to HQ that night.

He shifted so that his feet dangled over the edge of the building as the first batter stepped up to the plate. The sun was a little too bright and the helmet reflected it back at him. The air was still just a touch too cold and Clint figured that the loyal fans decked out in just team t-shirts were probably shivering. It was far from the perfect baseball weather, but as Clint unwrapped the hot dog from its tinfoil, he smiled to himself as he caught sight of the small tattoo on the inside of his wrist. Two single letters with an arrow shooting through them. Most people figured the CB stood for Clint Barton, and he let them continue thinking that. 


End file.
